VLC 2.0 has been released. "With faster decoding on multi-core, GPU, and mobile hardware and the ability to open more formats, notably professional, HD and 10bits codecs, 2.0 is a major upgrade for VLC. Twoflower has a new rendering pipeline for video, with higher quality subtitles, and new video filters to enhance your videos. It supports many new devices and BluRay Discs (experimental). Completely reworked Mac and Web interfaces and improvements in the other interfaces make VLC easier than ever to use. Twoflower fixes several hundreds of bugs, in more than 7000 commits from 160 volunteers."

because I don't need such, and also if I had such, it would be highly inconvenient to use it, as opposed to mouse (handy during presentations, easier to manipulate when you don't have cord - those do not apply to wireless keyboard...)

Or, one can use any other video player, as every other video player support click-to-pause.

Haven't used VLC in many years (Dragon works so much nicer on Linux than VLC). Does it popup an OSD of controls when you move the mouse? Or does it still separate the controls and the video into separate windows?